Matthew Smith of Dallas, Texas is one of the latest to discover a diamond at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. Along with his cousins from Connecticut, visited the park last week and found a 2.75-carat brown diamond. He named the diamond the Brown-Eyed Beauty.

Visitors at the park get to keep the diamonds they find at the 37.5 acre plowed field, the worlds only diamond producing mine open to the public. While visitors at the park find diamonds almost every day of the year, the 2.75-carat find is rare.

Perhaps the top authority on Crater of Diamonds is Glenn Worthington who found his first diamonds at the park in the summer of 1978. Glenn has been fascinated by the park every since and has written several books explaining the history of the park and the discoveries there. He just released a new DVD entitled “How to Find Genuine Diamonds in Arkansas,” which is available on his website at www.DiamondsInAR.com.

Glenn emailed me this note this weekend that puts this 2.75-carat diamond find in perspective.

Hi Denny,

Here is some news. A week ago, on July 12th, a nine-year-old boy arrived at the Crater with his family. Seven minutes later, he picked up a shiny rock and showed it to his mother. "Is this a diamond?" he asked. "No," she replied because it was really too big and they'd only been there a few minutes. They held onto the shiny pebble for three hours and had it setting on a bucket with other rocks at the wash pavilion. Finally, the young boy's aunt said, "You ought to take that to the Diamond Discover Center and have it checked to see if it is a diamond." He did, and it was. It was a brown diamond that weighed 2.75 carats, and they'd just left it laying around for 3 hours while they searched for diamonds. Funny but true. A nine-year-old boy did better in seven minutes at the Crater than I have done in 30 years of searching. That is the amazing thing about that place. You never know when or where a big diamond will turn up or who will find it.